The present invention relates generally to medical imaging, and more specifically to a catheter having a palpator that applies a tip-directed fluid or tip-directed indenter to cause elastographic deformation and an optical coherence tomography (OCT) imager to provide high speed elastographic property mapping.
Vascular catheter based elastography palpation using OCT (OCTe) has been done using global (noninvasive) compression or using the natural blood pressure cycle as the palpation force inducing the observed tissue deformations. Such an approach tends to be slow and incapable of producing high strain gradients, thereby reducing the resolution of the elastographic property mapping and the speed at which the mapping is done. A more recent development provides a combined system that synchronizes OCT and acoustic radiation force for simultaneously imaging and mechanically displacing tissue in a patient as a detection and analytical tool. The combined system provides an endoscopic probe having a piezoelectric element that generates the acoustic force to displace the tissue and an OCT scanner that images the tissue. The mechanical displacement of the tissue can be determined and any cancer and arterial plaques can be recognized from the mechanical displacement. See U.S. Pat. No. 7,999,945.